Friday, October 6, 2017

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 7 (October 5)

Greetings!

We had a good class this week, as always!  It's a good, engaging group of students, and we always seem to accomplish a lot.

Our Quick Write, which was to write something car-related, was inspired by the fact that October 5 is the anniversary of Enzo Ferrari's first race.  Ferrari worked and raced for Alfa Romeo until he left and started his own company.  When I was 20 I worked as a nanny for a family that had 5 vintage Ferraris, so I was especially interested in this little bit of trivia.

Our Words of the Day:
c'est la vie -- French "that is life" -- an expression that refers to the fact that all kinds of stuff happens in life.  Some students once suggested that "Whatever" might be a comparable English expression
bona fide -- Latin "in good faith" -- refers to something that is true or verifiable
savior faire -- French "know how to do" -- a quality of accomplishment, polish, tact, or sophistication
enfant terrible -- French "a terrible child" -- can refer to a misbehaving child or to a person who intentionally tries to shock others
je ne sais quoi -- French "I do not know what" -- a quality that can not be easily described, something inexpressible

I usually take the time that students are writing their quick writes to hand back homework, so discussing the homework often comes after these two beginning activities.  This week they had more to hand in than I had to hand back.  The Final Drafts of their Process Essays were due this week, along with literature and grammar homework.  When students hand in their final drafts, I also require them to hand in their rough drafts so that I can see the corrections that they make.

We are starting our third essay, and students can choose between an Extended Definition Essay or a Classification Essay.  Our two previous essays were done with a two-step process: a rough draft and a final draft.  As the essays get more complicated, a third step, a Pre-Write, is incorporated.  For this step that precedes the rough draft, students are to brainstorm ideas, conduct any needed research, and organize their thoughts before writing the rough draft.  The Pre-Write should be done for next week, BUT they are not to hand it in until the following week when they hand in their rough draft.

We broke into our Literature Circles, and I think these were only partially successful since a number of students had not prepared for their roles.  Next week we will talk through some of the key aspects of these groups and will discuss what works and what doesn't.  I'll also have a checklist to keep track of who prepares and who doesn't.  The next time they meet in their circles will be in three weeks on October 26.

The Groups and Roles:

Circle #1
Circle #2
Circle #3
Director
Katelyn
Christianna
Daniel
Illustrator
Kai Rose
Sofia
Carter
Luminary
Caitlin
Madi
Audrie
Word Nerd
David
Emily
Akaya
Connector
Noah

Bryce
Summarizer
Julia
Isabella
Kayla

For the final 20 minutes of class we worked on sentence patterns, including complex sentences with subordinate clauses.  They have a worksheet due next week, and we worked in class on the third exercise in class.  

I've included a link to the online resources that I use for this class.  A couple of students have mentioned that they don't remember how to get to my online grade book.  It is a Google doc in the shared folder for this class.  If you are not able to access the folder, please let me know.

Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read pages 141 - 153
-- 3 Reader Responses
-- 5 Vocabulary Words
-- Final Project Proposals
-- Extended Definition or Classification Pre-Write
-- Sentence Structures (Exercises 1, 2, 3)

Links for this week:
Class Notes
Technology Update, 2017/2018

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard

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